Peter Robinson: A Dedicated Man

‘And I don’t suppose there’s any point in keeping it warm?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. I’ll grab a sandwich somewhere.’ He kissed her quickly on the lips. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know what’s happening.’

Banks drove his white Cortina west along the valley bottom by the riverside. He was entitled to a police car and driver, but he actually enjoyed driving and preferred his own company when travelling to and from a case. A generous mileage allowance more than compensated for the cost.

With one eye on the road and one hand on the wheel, he flipped through an untidy pile of cassette tapes on the passenger seat, selected one and slipped it into the deck.

Though he swore that his passion for opera had not waned over the winter, he had to admit that he had been sidetracked into the world of English vocal and choral music. It was a change Sandra heartily approved of; she had never liked opera much in the first place, and Wagner had been the last straw for her. After she had finally gone so far as to attack one of his tapes with a magnet – the one with ‘Siegfried’s Funeral March’ on it, Banks remembered sadly – he had got the message. With Ian Partridge singing Dowland’s ‘I Saw My Lady Weepe’, he drove on.

Like the larger and more famous Yorkshire Dales, Swainsdale runs more or less from west to east, with a slight list towards the south, until the humble river loses itself in the Ouse. At its source near Swainshead, high in the Pennine fells, the River Swain is nothing more than a trickle of sparkling clear water, but in carving its way down towards the North Sea it has formed, with the help of glaciers and geological faults, a long and beautiful dale which broadens out as it approaches the Vale of York. The main town, Eastvale, dominated by its Norman castle, sits at the extreme eastern edge of the dale and looks out over the rich, fertile plain. On a clear day, the Hambleton Hills and the North York Moors are visible in the distance.

He saw Lyndgarth on the valley side to the north, near the dark ruins of Devraulx Abbey, and passed through peaceful Fortford, where the remains of a Roman fort were still under excavation on a hillock opposite the village green. Ahead, he could see the bright limestone curve of Crow Scar high up on his right, and, as he drew closer, he noticed the local police searching a field marked off by irregular drystone walls. The limestone shone bright in the sun, and the walls stood out against the grass like pearl necklaces on an emerald velvet cushion.

To get to the scene, Banks had to drive through Helmthorpe, the dale’s central market village, turn right at the bridge on to Hill Road, and then turn right again on to a narrow road that meandered north-eastwards about halfway up the valley side. It was a miracle that the track had ever been tarmacked – probably a gesture towards increasing tourism, Banks guessed. No good for tyre tracks, though, he thought gloomily.

Being more used to getting around in the city than in the countryside, he scraped his knee climbing the low wall and stumbled over the lumpy sods of grass in the field. Finally, out of breath, he got to where a uniformed man, presumably Constable Weaver, stood talking to a gnarled old farmer about fifty yards up the slope.

By the side of the north-south wall, loosely covered with earth and stones, lay the body. Enough of its covering had been removed to make it recognizable as a man. The head lay to one side, and, kneeling beside it, Banks could see that the hair at the back was matted with blood. A jolt of nausea shot through his stomach, but he quickly controlled it as he began to make mental notes about the scene. Standing up, he was struck by the contrast between the beautiful, serene day and the corpse at his feet.

‘Anything been disturbed?’ he asked Weaver, stepping carefully back over the rope.

‘Not much, sir,’ the young constable replied. His face was white and the sour smell on his breath indicated that he had probably been sick over the wall. Natural enough, Banks thought. Probably the lad’s first corpse.

‘Mr Tavistock here’ – he gestured towards the whiskered farmer – ‘says he just moved those stones around the head to see what his dog was scratting at.’

Banks looked at Tavistock, whose grim expression betrayed a man used to death. Ex-army, most likely, and old enough to have seen action in two world wars.

‘I were lookin’ fer one ’o my sheep,’ Tavistock began in a slow, thick Yorkshire accent, ‘and I saw that there damage to t’ wall. I thought there’d bin a c’lapse.’ He paused and rubbed his grizzly chin. ‘There shouldn’t a bin no c’lapse in a Bessthwaite wall. Bin there sin’ eighteen thirty, that ’as. Any road, old Ben started scratting. At first I thought nowt on it, then…’ He shrugged as if there was nothing more to be said.

‘What did you do when you realized what it was?’ Banks asked.

Tavistock scratched his turkey neck and spat on the grass. ‘Just ’ad a look, that’s all. I thought it might a bin a sheep somebody’d killed. That ’appens sometimes. Then I ran ’ome’ – he pointed to a farmhouse about half a mile away – ‘and I called young Weaver ’ere.’

Banks was dubious about the ‘ran’ but he was glad that Tavistock had acted quickly. He turned away and gave instructions to the photographer and the forensic team, then took off his jacket and leaned against the warm stone wall while the boffins did their work.

Sally slammed down her knife and fork and yelled at her father: ‘Just because I go for a walk with a boy it doesn’t mean I’m a tramp or a trollop or any of those things!’

‘Sally!’ Mrs Lumb butted in. ‘Stop shouting at your father. That wasn’t what he meant and you know it.’

Sally continued to glare. ‘Well that’s what it sounded like to me.’

‘He was only trying to warn you,’ her mother went on. ‘You have to be careful. Boys try to take advantage of you sometimes. Especially a good-looking girl like you.’ She said it with a mixture of pride and fear.

‘You don’t have to treat me like I’m a baby, you know,’ Sally said. ‘I’m sixteen now.’ She gave her mother a pitying glance, cast another baleful look at her father, and went back to her roast beef.

‘Aye,’ said Mr Lumb, ‘and you’ll do as you’re told till you’re eighteen. That’s the law.’

To Sally, the man sitting opposite her was at the root of all her problems, and, of course, Charles Lumb fitted easily into the role his daughter had assigned him: that of an old-fashioned, narrow-minded yokel whose chief argument against anything new and interesting was, ‘What was good enough for my father and his father before him is good enough for you too, young lady.’ There was a strong conservative streak in him, only to be expected of someone whose family had lived in the area for more generations than could be remembered. A traditionalist, Charles Lumb often said that the dale as he had loved it was dying. He knew that the only chance for the young was to get away, and that saddened him. Quite soon, he was certain, even the inhabitants of the dales villages would belong to the National Trust, English Heritage or the Open Spaces Society. Like creatures in a zoo, they would be paid to act out their quaint old ways in a kind of living museum. The grandson of a cabinetmaker, Lumb, who worked at the local dairy factory, found it hard to see things otherwise. The old crafts were dying out because they were uneconomic, and only tourists kept one cooper, one blacksmith and one wheelwright in business.

But because Lumb was a Yorkshireman through and through, he tended to bait and tease in a manner that could easily be taken too seriously by an ambitious young girl like Sally. He delivered the most outrageous statements and opinions about her interests and dreams in such a deliberately deadpan voice that anyone could be excused for not catching the gentle, mocking humour behind them. If he had been less sarcastic and his daughter less self-centred, they might have realized that they loved each other very much.